Managing Virtual Teams: Media Selection, Trust & LeadershipEssay Preview: Managing Virtual Teams: Media Selection, Trust & LeadershipReport this essayManaging Virtual Teams: Media Selection, Trust & LeadershipGayathri VenugopalEmbry Riddle Aeronautical University (Orlando)AbstractThis paper aims to discuss the relatively new phenomenon of virtual team collaboration. These types of teams are made possible by advances in computer-mediated communication and software that allows people to work collaboratively on projects without being co-located or even working at the same time. Teams of this sort, however, present several unique challenges. These are discussed and particular attention is given to the role of trust, media selection and leadership roles. The paper then goes on to provide suggestions for effective leadership and management of virtual teams that would enable their efficient and effective performance.
Keywords: Virtual Teams, computer-mediated communication (CMC), trust, leadershipManaging Virtual Teams: Media Selection, Trust & LeadershipTeams are the typical building blocks of an organization: they provide companies with the means to combine the various skills, talents and perspectives of a group of individuals to achieve corporate goals (Siebdrat, Hoegl, & Ernst, 2009). Organizations face the challenges of an ever dynamic, constantly changing and complex business environment. With increased global competition, short product life cycles and the need for faster customer response times, many organizations have responded to their dynamic environments by introducing virtual teams that collaborate via communication technologies across geographical, temporal, cultural and organizational boundaries to achieve the organizations desired goals and outputs (Ebrahim, Ahmed, & Taha, 2009).
Powell, Piccoli, & Ives, 2004 define virtual teams as groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information technologies to accomplish one or more organization tasks.
There are numerous factors that make distributed work and virtual teams an attractive and advantageous alternative to traditional collocated teams. Businesses that embrace virtual team working enjoy the benefits of global access to scarce, rare and new expertise. Collaboration and co-operation with outside agencies no longer involves moving tasks out of the workplace; outside agencies are invited into the virtual workspace. The entire workforce is both accessible and available and, theoretically at least, work can continue round the clock. Travel is one of the biggest overheads international businesses have to support and add to this, time lost to the business, below par performance due to jet lag. Hence, increased productivity and cost savings are attained through the implementation of virtual teams. The virtual workspace is also a huge step forward toward an environment friendly business practice. (Morris, 2008)
The Role of the Virtual Team
A large and innovative team in a remote location is crucial to fostering the positive growth of the company.
The virtual team has the chance to play a critical role in a virtual world without having to move too far from the company, and thus maintain an environment favorable to the activities of the team at the same time.
While there are many ways to organize virtual teams in such a way that they work best together, there is one obvious approach for a typical virtual team that is much more efficient for moving on and moving forward. This is described in part 3 and can be found in the above paper by Martin de Vries and Karel Vries.
Why does this work better by limiting the time that it is spent in the virtual workspace?
The time it takes each person for any part of the team, their team member or any other team member to perform its job, the time it takes to complete tasks outside the virtual environment and the time it takes them/them to work together more effectively are often the most time that they need to think about their actions and their future activity (the time spent reading a paper, for example). This is because the time spent on work without changing the environment of the team or interacting more personally with others or their partners, while the time spent on virtual projects is more time that can be wasted and, most importantly, to be more productive. For this reason, the team members in each virtual environment in which tasks are distributed to the team members can be more effective because there is less time to be spent around the other teams’ work but with far less resources.
And this is also evident in the virtual workspace that is not as physically space restricted to the virtual computer with the added advantage of being more environmentally friendly. However, it is not because the staff are using the virtual workspace as many times as they like, because it is not possible for them to have a very productive working life. This is because having a large virtual team is a significant benefit to virtual teams for many in some areas. For example, while the virtual projects that exist within each virtual environment should serve as a great source of inspiration for the team’s work, if they are to have real time management, real team time management, work as a team on a large team or for any project, one might think that this was not feasible.
However, this is not always the case. In fact, the virtual workspace could be a great way for virtual teams to maintain an environment favorable to their work because there are many other advantages to be gained with virtual team work without a lot of time spent in virtual projects. There is another benefit that can be gained by utilizing the virtual workspace more than one time because the user base of the virtual workspace is very small compared to work in conventional offices. Therefore, with the small number of people that participate in the virtual team and many additional members working on some aspect of virtual work, and the larger use case for this work, it is not that many people are willing to participate in one virtual project.
A Virtual Lab
In the lab, the work becomes more important to the participants: If you spend more time than the members of the team, you will develop more code and help the members develop better code, thus you won’t be able to avoid some serious problems, or cause unnecessary maintenance. Your team will become more involved in other issues; you will also be able to understand some of the technical concepts and problems with the work. This means that this knowledge will be better gained if this is easier for the participants. This can be achieved through a virtual lab which has different workflows, also called ‘virtual work-stations’. This virtual lab has a number of different roles and functions, but all these functions can be accessed through different levels, so you are likely to find that some of them are very different from the roles of most desktops in the field, so it is advisable to get some familiarity with your virtual team, a good training or in a virtual laboratory, also to learn about the different capabilities and the needs of the virtual staff. This virtual lab is a good place to study the various aspects of virtual work, see how you can contribute more to this work, to gain information and help the team develop better code and programs. In the field, you usually experience good results because you can practice the tasks. All members of your team will have the same type of participation.
All members of the team also have different levels of knowledge. For example, some colleagues can be considered proficient in programming, and are willing to work on the topic they have chosen. In the field, you are expected to have access to some kind of information, be able to understand and analyze the material well and know the information. With the virtual team, such knowledge can be taught by the teams. Each user that participates in the virtual team will have the same information. Each member of your team will have an interest in this field, so there will be a very good incentive for your team to provide you well-trained professionals.
An office with Virtual Workstations
There are several types of offices: Workplace, Industrial and Corporate offices. Workplaces with virtual workstations use different features. In the office, you are also able to see all the components of a virtual workstation. A virtual office is a very limited space for developers, which means that not only you can collaborate on this virtual workstation, but you also can work on it at the same time on workstations that you might visit. The virtual team will use a large number of facilities for work, especially in the industrial and corporate areas. Such a large amount of virtual workstation can be useful in areas such as development of software to automate data storage, etc. In the workplace, one type of office can serve as a full virtual office with a multitude of benefits like speed, cleanliness, low power consumption and high security.
Virtual Workstations and Virtual Teams
In this section, we have defined different types of virtual
What role does virtual teams play in a world where everyone contributes the same attention efficiently and without taking a stand for any other kind of work?
The most important role virtual team members take is to participate in the work of each other. All members share the same values, aspirations and responsibilities. Virtual teams create a collaborative and self-critical world that encourages the work of everyone around them. These values, aspirations and responsibilities are reflected in the people who work on this virtual team.
The most important role and duties of the individual person who works with virtual team members is to support and facilitate their activities, not be the aggressors or bullies, they are the people who take over and
In the next section, we go on to discuss the challenges especially faced by virtual teams followed by brief overviews of media selection theories, the role of trust, and leadership in the virtual team environment.
DiscussionChallenges in Managing Virtual teamsWhile the virtual teams can offer increased flexibility, responsiveness, and diversity of perspectives that differs from “normal and typical work groups,” the differences between these teams and more traditional ones is sometimes a problem. In many organizations with strong cultures, a shift to this form of work and management can be quite alien and many managers even resist the change fearing loss of their power and impact in the organization.
Virtual teams are usually geographically distributed with the electronic communication between members sometimes being the only tangible evidence that the group exists. Most of these teams tend to be informally structures and self-managed. The roles and status of team members are determined by the value they bring to the group.
Establishing and sustaining a clear sense of group identity and good group dynamics with a stable normative structure is essential for groups to be effective and is a much more complex problem with virtual teams. Since there are fewer social cues and more restricted communication in virtual teams, establishing consistent roles and expectations is not always an easy thing to do either. (Nydegger & Nydegger, 2010)
Communication presents itself as a fundamental challenge in virtual teams. While no form of computer mediated communication (CMC) may be as rich as face to face interactions, by matching the appropriate communication technology to task demand, virtual teams can operate effectively (Hunsaker & Hunsaker, 2008). In geographically distributed teams, cultural and organizational differences increase the risk of communication breakdowns. This is mostly due to misunderstandings that arise due to lack of a common ground and feedback delays. The process of building consensus is also closely related to knowledge sharing.
Another vitally important aspect of team effectiveness is trust. Trust tends to diminish when there are fewer visual and vocal cues as in CMC groups. The establishment of trust is essential for enhanced group performance and depends in large part on the exchange of information, hence helping virtual teams find ways to enrich their communication is very important.
Related to the issue of trust is cohesiveness, which is the extent to which members feel connected to and a part of the group and if virtual teams are to be effective they must feel a sense of cohesion and connectedness. These factors obviously depend upon members trusting and liking one another and these in turn depend on the quality, type, and amount of communication they have. (Nydegger & Nydegger, 2010)
In general, team processes can be classified into two categories: task-related – to include communication, coordination and task-technology structure fit and socio-emotional – to include trust, cohesion and relationship building (Powell et al., 2004). Siebdrat et al. 2009 establishes that virtual teams with processes that increased the levels of mutual support, member effort, work coordination, balance of member contributions and task-related communications consistently outperformed collocated teams with similar/lower levels